Short answer: When I think about the GOP retaking Congress I get cold sweats and flashbacks of 2000-2008. Ditto that for the prospect of say, Newt Gingrich sitting in The Oval Office. The only Republicans who are at all honest – like Gary Johnson who has really good civil liberties bona fides – would A) never win and B) are really way too economically conservative for me. So yeah, Republicans taking back Congress in a couple months is just bad news as far as I’m concerned.

This graph, for instance, really frightens me:

I’m really flabbergasted by the lack of enthusiasm on the part of Democrats. It’s not so much that the Democrats are offering anything particularly exciting to the voters (though they have passed a few major pieces of legislation, you know!) but that the alternative just seems so unabashedly awful…can’t Democrats at least mobilize opposition to the opposition?

Okay so that’s the short answer.

Long answer after the fold…

It’s certainly been a change of pace and perspective for me to blog here at Balloon Juice, and one I’m profoundly grateful to John for. I’ve been drifting leftward for quite a while now (from dissident conservative to fed-up libertarian to, more recently, pro-market liberal with libertarian and especially civil libertarian streaks) – so drifting leftward, but on uncertain feet. And one weakness of my blogging style and perhaps of the habits I’ve gotten into blogging at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen, is that I’ve been able to walk this particular ideological tightrope past the point of its usefulness. The ‘pox on both your houses’ style really is sort of annoying after a while even if it is unintentional and even if it is due to honest doubt rather than an attempt to please everyone. Certainly it’s nothing to build one’s political philosophy upon. And quite frankly, the pushback I’ve gotten in the comments about having it both ways is fair, and it’s gotten me thinking – a lot – about picking a side. How you frame your argument and who you frame it for matters. Picking sides matters.

So I will. I no longer have any desire to be considered a conservative – and no longer consider myself one (I do have a somewhat anti-modernist streak, for instance, which I blame on all the fantasy literature I read as a child but which is more a sort of romanticism than anything very political. I recall as a child being quite depressed by the thought that no matter how far I walked in any direction from my home I would inevitably come up against a paved road. How this translates into right vs. left is another matter though it does make me a strong supporter of localism and buying locally and so forth.)

I’ll vote Democrat this fall and I’ll almost certainly vote Democrat in 2012. If I’d been a Senator last year I would have voted for the HCR bill. The Democratic Party has its flaws but at least it cares about governance, at least Democrats try to make the world a less harsh, more egalitarian place even when sometimes their policies backfire or are simply wrong to begin with. And liberalism generally is just more serious an endeavor than conservatism is. More wonky, more beholden to, you know, data and facts.

I have always voted Democrat in any case, even as a self-described conservative, and remain pro-gay-marriage, anti-war, anti-torture, and against the drug war, against the security state, against crony capitalism. It’s not my politics so much that have undergone a change lately (though they have as well), but my thoughts on who I should and should not align myself with, and why this is important

Conservative politics don’t even lend themselves all that well to conservative ends to begin with.

For instance, I’d say the generous maternity leave in Sweden or Germany is far more in line with a belief in the importance of family than our lack of any policy to that effect. If being pro-family is conservative then I guess I’m conservative in that way – but I think ‘family’ should include committed gay couples. If wanting a stable fiscal future is conservative, then again I suppose that describes me. But we can’t simply cut spending down to the marrow to achieve this, nor should we. Slashing taxes at all costs is not fiscally conservative. Raising them is much more so – and conservatives are by and large too irresponsible to even countenance this. Only a very few are considering cutting defense spending to help balance the budget. And indeed, there are a very few very smart, honest, hopeful thinkers on the right who I admire a great deal but they are only a very few. And not movers and shakers in any case. On the libertarian front – or the liberal-tarian front at least – I see much more hope.

I also share a good deal more cultural affinity with the left, broadly speaking, than with the right and my cultural politics have always reflected this. I watch Colbert and the Daily Show and almost never turn the channel to Fox News. I listen to NPR. I hang out mostly with liberals. I have very liberal views on most social issues. I still believe in the importance of decentralized power structures, checks and balances, and in not placing too much faith in the state – but again, these are positions that are perfectly acceptable on the left in ways that my belief in gay marriage or higher taxes or non-interventionist foreign policy are simply not acceptable on the right.

Furthermore, while I think there’s a great deal of merit to competition (one reason I really liked Ron Wyden’s healthcare plan!), free markets, economic liberalism and so forth I find the fetishization of low taxes among the right and among many American libertarians more than a bit silly. I favor investment in public health, public transit and infrastructure, and in the welfare system generally rather than some vague bare-boned state. Sure, there’s problems with all sorts of government programs, with some public sector unions, etc. but at least liberals seem open to tackling these problems. At least within the big tent of liberalism there is room to disagree.

I’ve noted before that I don’t think free markets are sustainable without a broad and sturdy welfare state to support them. Theoretically, sure – anything is possible – but the fact is markets fail and must fail to be effective as a system, and very real people pay the price – not because they are lazy, or because they are lacking enough rugged individualism, but because life can be hard, and it is much harder for those people who lack strong family or community support. Ultimately, the highest price is paid by those who can afford it least. We need to craft a society where that price is not so high – and I think we can use markets and the welfare state to achieve this, much as they have done in northern Europe (though undoubtedly our version will be unique and we can, on the way, learn from their mistakes). I don’t see many conservatives taking these questions seriously, and even the most progressive-minded conservatives out there, I fear, are placing their hopes in the wrong coalition.

I don’t feel at home in that coalition, personally, and it’s high time to bid it adieu.

Ooooh. You are so going to get in trouble for this! I don’t know why yet, but you will.

And I’m with you on that graph. Disturbing as all hell. Once again, I feel like I’m in bizarro world and can’t get out.

PS I feel your pain on the taking a stand issue. I used to have your tendencies…being semantically obtuse (or, just obtuse, really), but then I realized that, no, I’m not going to debate the Civil Rights era anymore. And no, I’m not going to debate women’s rights. Or the rights of gays and lesbians anymore. At which point, I became shrill. Because, at some point, the debate just gets old.

Americans are sick of being told that half an aspirin will cure their painful headache, and so out of frustration with their headaches not being cured yet, will consider once again listening to the other guy saying that drinking fecal matter soaked rotting meat will help better.

Must of been the Beck Palooza of Hate that reached the threshold. Republicans, and those that hold the floor on conservatism are quite insane these days. The democrats have annoyed me to platitudes of high blood pressure, and why I went back to being an independent, but caucus with the ceiling cat dems. But I have and always will consider myself an ordinary liberal, that to me means I don’t turn my brain off in service to any cause, but on nearly every issue, I am left of center. There are leftwing nuts as well, but they are not malevolent like the rightwing nuts, and I fuck with them almost entirely over political process to keep the dogma to a minimum. Picking sides does matter these days, more than any other in my lifetime, but that should not devolve into warring over labels and jingoism and casting judgments on anything other than the substance of a persons belief system.

So call yourself anything you want, so long as you clearly state what you believe and don’t tailor that to fit what your commentors expect. That way lies confusion and despair.

Well, Mr Kain, I guess you’ve just fallen out of the running for a Gingrich Red Pioneer or Boehner Hunchbacked Eagle or Palin Rabid Wolfslayer Award. But that doesn’t detract from your rapidly growing appeal to this unabashed liberal.

As for the graph, I am not tremendously surprised that the Dems seem to lack enthusiasm, while the GOP are fired up. We’ve seen 12 months of shameless, hateful, dishonest propaganda. We’ve seen the Blue Dogs selling out, as usual. We’ve seen Dems like Harry Reid groveling to the nutjobs for re-election. I respect Obama, I think Pelosi has done a fabulous job, but the Democrats as a party look pretty unimpressive, despite having achievements to run on. They haven’t even managed to whack a GOP that is chock-full of thugs, frauds, bigots, swindlers and snake-oil salesmen of the worst variety. The irony is that the polls keep telling us that the country wants more liberal policy, not less. And yet the Dems scuttle off to hide, and get picked off one by one. Until the Dems learn to fight and hang tough together, it’s hard to blame the country for not respecting them. More Grayson and less Reid, please.

I’ve noted before that I don’t think free markets are sustainable without a broad and sturdy welfare state to support them.

I agree, and I also don’t think a modern economy is healthy when the top 2% (or whatever it is) controls 50% of the wealth. Every proposal from Republicans (and their buddies at Reason) would have the effect of making the superrich even richer. Any disagreement with this is soshalism.

I am impressed and won over. We will still disagree about some things and you still have some learning to do about how to phrase things so as not to unintentionally piss of half the commenters, but this is your best post ever, a heartfelt declaration of who you are and what you believe. Wish you’d done this when you were introduced. Could have saved you some grief. Some of which came from me. Based on what you said here, our basic values line up almost perfectly. Welcome to the reality community. It often sucks on this side, but the snark is the best anywhere.

I’ve always thought of myself as conservative–my personal tastes and lifestyle, temperament. I often think that if I lived in Europe, I’d probably be in one of the center-right parties but this

The Democratic Party has its flaws but at least it cares about governance, at least Democrats try to make the world a less harsh, more egalitarian place […] And liberalism generally is just more serious an endeavor than conservatism is. More wonky, more beholden to, you know, data and facts.

is the reason I’m a Democrat, and considered a DFH by the likes of David Broder. I grew up, politically, while Ronald Reagan was refusing to acknowledge apartheid and sending a madman to give a Bible to Islamic fundamentalists, then Old Man Bush started his unique brand of snivelling demagoguery about the pledge of allegiance and taxes. Then came Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey and Tom Delay. As I get older, Republicans get meaner, angrier and more detached from reality, culminating in Sarah Palin. I think I’ve voted for one Republican in my life. I can’t imagine it will happen again.

other commenters have said it much better, but generally speaking, “vote for us because, yes we do suck, but we don’t suck quite as much as the other guys” is not an inspirational campaign slogan.

I’m of the opinion most of the elected Dems will WELCOME being back in the minority. The concept of leadership, of actually backing up words with bold action, scares the poop out of them and cuts into their cocktail party time.

Kain, I’m about your age, and I can recall going through a similar transformation several years ago. It wasn’t that I necessarily thought conservatives were right, but I subscribed very strongly to the “pox on both your houses” view and was profoundly skeptical of certain elements of the left (which is easy to do, because the left is pretty ideologically diverse). Mostly what resolved my dilemma was the realization that leftist nuts had vastly less influence and importance in the democratic party than rightist nuts had in the republican party.

Same here, and why I think conservative principles that are centered around the conserve part are great for individual guidance on day to day living. They are a complete disaster when applied to governing a country that was created as a liberal democracy.

There was a time, back in the Stone Age, when I tried to keep up with a few conservative thinkers. A lot of problems are complex and it often helps to look at it from another perspective.

Plus, I often had a suspicion that the Best Way might be some combination of the two views.

Now, alas, that isn’t so. The smart, constructive, and creative thinkers from the conservative side are all in hiding or something.

It is our loss. We are all poorer for the lack of real, solution-oriented dialogue. We still have problems that are very complex and we have too few folks who are willing to think about these problems.

Do you think we might coax some of those intelligent conservatives to come out of hiding?

The reason you’re a conservative comfortable in the Democratic party is because that’s where all the sane conservatives have gone. I’m a liberal Democrat, and yet someone like Ben Nelson is called a Democrat which is like calling me Lady Gaga, it just makes no goddamned sense.

Nelson was known as a Republican when I was still a kid, now he’s supposed to champion liberal values like equality, fairness and strong, reasonable regulation so that we all aren’t poisoned by the eggs we eat at breakfast.

You’re left with tight-ass conservative fuck whistles who couldn’t pass muster at a Beck-Palin fucknozzleooza masquerading as Democrats all the while shilling for corporate interests over the interest of union members, the ever-shrinking middle class and the powerless poor.

Thanks Reagan, you mealy-mouthed fuck knuckle. We want Democrats and they send us the least crazy christianist fuckwads. Aint it great to be an American?

@Mark S.: Rather, the fecal matter soaked rotting meat we were given under the Bush Jr. triumvirate wasn’t virulent and putrefied enough and we didn’t get enough of it, so, it’s pretty much like we’ve never tried it.

I just hit mute for a commercial that has Uncle Sam digging a pit that has to be about twelve feet deep, while an announcer ominously intones that we have to borrow more money from China to pay for a health care bill that raises taxes, increases insurance premiums and cuts Medicare. It’s all horseshit, but it takes a while to explain that, and if you’re explaining, you’re losing.
The right wing is spending over $400 million to sell lies in this cycle alone, and that’s just a down payment on what they expect in return for their money. That stat alone ought to make it clear to most voters who’s on whose side, but more people probably know who won the last dancing with the stars than are aware of it.

It’s not so much that the Democrats are offering anything particularly exciting to the voters (though they have passed a few major pieces of legislation, you know!) but that the alternative just seems so unabashedly awful…can’t Democrats at least mobilize opposition to the opposition?

Well, one thing I have learned since the 2008 election (from reading dailykos now and then) is that unless Democrats get 100% of what they think was promised right away, they apparently are just going to take their ball and go home. When I was a Republican, their people seemed to better understand that it can several elections to get things done.

I’m of the opinion most of the elected Dems will WELCOME being back in the minority. The concept of leadership, of actually backing up words with bold action, scares the poop out of them and cuts into their cocktail party time.

Good. Let’s make them pay for their pathetic performance by re-electing them into the majority.

But there are two sorts of Lib Dem, at least – those, like Clegg, who wrote for the more right-wing Orange Book, and those like Charles Kennedy who are more interested in social justice and avoiding regressive taxes. From this piece, you sound closer to Kennedy.

@Mark S.: It was ersatz fecal matter? Where ever does one find such a thing?

@ED Kain: Nice post. It is, I am sure, not easy to dissociate oneself from one’s affiliations. People here at BJ will continue will continue to disagree with you on issues, both big and small. People will still hurl abuse at you for any reason they can find, but it is par for the course. Don’t let bug you; it happens to everyone.

“I’m pro-gay-marriage, anti-war, anti-torture, and against the drug war, against the security state, against crony capitalism.”

Wait, so why are you so sympathetic to the Democratic Party then? The Democratic Party is against gay marriage, it’s extending the wars, looked the other way on torture, passed the military commissions act, stands strongly in favor of the drug war, continues to expand the national security state and strongly supports the banking cartels and crony capitalists who fund them.

“It’s not my politics so much that have undergone a change lately (though they have as well), but my thoughts on who I should and should not align myself with”

Oh, so you’re a reactionary! You’ll be right at home in the Democratic party then.

@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I still think the best counterpunch to that kind of stuff is a “They must think you’re not very smart” ad, which would call out the way every fucking thing Republicans do in their ads and media is a giant fucking lie, _while at the same time_ upholding the Bob Somerby point about how we on the left should talk to the disgruntled people by blaming the media misinformers rather than on the sometimes-not-entirely-evil people who fall for it because that’s all they hear.

the current GOP (aka “teabaggers”) doesn’t seem like a patient bunch, to me.

Well, compare them to the dailykos crowd who claim they are not even going to vote because they haven’t gotten everything they claim was promised. I bet the tea baggers will not only vote this November, they will vote in 2010, 2012 etc irregardless of whether they win or lose this fall.

let me say this again slow-ly for the 100th time…you cannot simply blame the dems for being bad at messaging when the vehicle for the message (the media) is bought and paid for to be anti-democratic, anti-union, anti-tax, anti- welfare state.

Chomsky/Herman’s Manufacturing Consent was right all those years ago and is still right today. the cultural and political affinities of the corporate class controls the media and thereby what is acceptable discourse in the country.

Just look at the mining disasters and the utter lack of any pro-union, worker protection legislation.

many of the dems may indeed be bad, but not Al Franken, not Bernie Sanders in the Senate, for example. Heck, there is a sizable progressive caucus in the House that may just as well not exist because the means to getting the message out would rather them go away.

It’s not so much that the Democrats are offering anything particularly exciting to the voters (though they have passed a few major pieces of legislation, you know!) but that the alternative just seems so unabashedly awful

Well, it looks like this is going to be a social issues election and the big issues of the past Summer have all been framed as social issues. We could of course be squabbling about immigration as an economic concern, but we fail to do so. Or we could talk about building mosques for the construction jobs that would bring as well as the benefits of having an empty building refurbished for a new use. But we don’t do that. Democrats are always more divided on social issues than Republicans. It would also be nice if, say, the Taliban would have responded to our little surge by surrendering en masse, Israel and Iran would not have entered into high-profile drone construction projects, oil in the Gulf would have turned out to have been really just water, and the Senate wasn’t encumbered by self-inflicted rules, including the odd rule that it can only tackle one issue at a time and it must take at least a few months to deliberate on each.

But it is going to be a social issue election with the economy faltering. Yippee.

I suspect that Clegg is well down the road to destroying the Lib Dems, and that we shall see some high-profile defections in the next year. Voters seem increasingly unhappy with Clegg’s willingness to prop up a Conservative government that has largely abandoned the pretense of being genuinely moderate, and this is before the big changes really bite.

Well, it’s not like we didn’t all see this coming. “Sane conservatism” is liberalism. The only way to associate conservatism with modern wingnuttery is to be, well, stupid. ED, whatever his faults, is not stupid.

I thought a few weeks ago that E.D. said he never voted for either major party, that he usually voted Libertarian. Maybe I’m getting him confused with someone else. No matter, he might be “sane”, but John’s selling him as a “sane Concervative” might have been a little less than truthful. I guess it’s back to the drawing board in search of a true sane Conservative.

Well, you may not be conservative, but given how perverted all political categories have become these days, who the hell know WHAT they are anymore. Your posts are good reading, with lots of food for thought.

By the way, I hate to Pee in the Libertarian Pool Party, but I survived “Let them eat cake” Gary Johnson as our governor and I hope to God the current media love fest with him fades fast. He’s not the great “honest” guy he seems. Yeah he’s got that warm, fuzzy, “Legalize Marijuana” halo around him. But his totally irresponsible funding cuts for even basic education, social service, and public safety obligations of government were outrageous.

He’s a compulsive narcissist who I am sure is loving his 15 minutes of fame on the national politics beat. While our NM school and police forces and health and social services department “beasts” were “starved”, he fiddled his multimillionaire-ass time away, spouting utopian libertarian fantasies (“High school shouldn’t be funded by the government–they’re just seat time for lazy teenagers. Their parents should pay for private schooling after 8th grade”.). And training to compete in marathons and triathlons. Oh, and hiring his business buddies at Wackenhut to privatize our state prison industry.

Under Gary Johnson’s self-gratifying romp into public office, this state was in the dark ages for eight years. God forbid he ever becomes President of the United States. We’d all need to be smoking marijuana on a daily basis to survive it.

We will still disagree about some things and you still have some learning to do about how to phrase things so as not to unintentionally piss of half the commenters, but this is your best post ever, a heartfelt declaration of who you are and what you believe.

Why do I seem to be the only person here who thought to himself, “I know ED, I know.” Everything ED said in this post he has said before. But oh so many people got fixated on how he said it then… rather than what he said.

ED: it takes time, it takes time to face up to the lies. Especially when you have been telling them to yourself (I am speaking of me and my marraige to a drug dealing, lying theif of a c…. )

OK I will pass on that word, but the truth is, I was lying to myself because to face the truth of who and what my soon to be ex wife had become was just to horrible a truth: “If she is that, What am I?”

Well, stupid for starters….

Seriously tho, I have heard a tenor of what I went thru with my ex, in the voice of every conservative convert I have listened to. And I always knew where they were going, long before they did.

Y’know, I’m really appreciating the writing of Conor Friedersdorf these days. He seems like a conservative kid who traveled the world, and is willing to admit he might be wrong. If people like him and this Kain fellow are going to be our new conservative overlords, it’s a step up from Gingrich and Palin.

Damning with faint praise above, but it’s the essence of dealing with reality as opposed to ideology that makes for a good conversation. And that’s what these people seem to aspire to. This is where the debate belongs, not on Palin’s twitter page.

@Ella in New Mexico: Well, Susan Martinez is leading Denish right now in polls, and she seems like the real deal wingnut, though I haven’t been keeping up with the campaign that much. Johnson was a loon, by any standard. You could have sat turnip in the Governors chair and nothing would have been different/

Any time I hear Conor Friedersdorf’s name, I am reminded of this (true/slant link):

QUOTE
Dear Jonah Goldberg,I’m writing this letter as a fan – I’ve tremendous respect for the pioneering work you did at National Review Online, your attempts to inject humor into political writing, and the enjoyable debates you’ve done with Peter Beinart.
END QUOTE
(emphasis added)

For some reason, the US Democrats, and by extension the US left as a whole, are the only leftist movement in the world that treat “solidarity” as a dirty word. A lot of the world’s leftist political parties expect a level of party loyalty and cohesion greater than that of US Republicans. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that these political parties tend to get a lot more done than the Democratic party.

Party cohesion is necessary to get stuff done. What makes the Republicans evil is not that they stand together; it’s that they stand together in the fulfilment of evil, selfish policies.

That being said, Reagan had a worse fall in popularity in his first term with a better economy. 2 years into term + high unemployment + midterms = bad for incumbent party. Because it’s a pattern that has repeated so many times, I think it’s the result of factors beyond any single policy decision by the Obama administration.

Why? Is there some parallel world, alternate history I’m not aware of, in which the Democratic party is not in bed with the banksters, not in support of the drug war, not weak-kneed on civil liberties issues, etc?

Further, lesser evilism is the primary form of political reactionism in the United States today, i.e. in which a person supports one party first and foremost because they oppose the other party.

@Frank: Someone needs to separate “enthusiasm” from whether-am-I-going-to-vote and who-am-I-going-to-vote-for.

At 53, I have recently discovered that I am officially a “geezer” here, so perhaps I am speaking out of turn. But I don’t think that’s a fair representation of liberals or, specifically, of the Great Orange Satan. Liberals are mostly willing to compromise themselves into being actual Republicans (See Nelson, Ben) if it will permit them to get something done. (If anything, Markos is a ruthless pragmatist when push comes to shove. That’s actually one of the things he does/is that irritates me.)

That doesn’t mean we don’t get to bitch about it. The authoritarian streak that leads Republicans to “fall in line” simply doesn’t exist in the Democratic party. The very intellectual honesty that makes me proud to be liberal is the cause of Democratic malaise.

I was never an Obama-bot, and wasn’t surprised to see him turn out to be the most centrist of the three choices originally available. What I DID believe was that he would reclaim our national character, and stand true to certain essential values. And in that I’m afraid our President has been a dismal failure. If anything, he stands as proof of the inherent corruption of absolute power.

Oooh, so we don’t torture people anymore. Good for us! But rather than renouncing Bush/Cheney’s breathtaking expansion of Executive power, Obama has extended it. We are now supposed to accept that the President has the power to order the execution of any US citizen he deems a “terrorist.” And oh-by-the-way there is no review of this designation.

So ETFOOM but I get to be “unenthusiastic.” It doesn’t mean I won’t vote, as I have done at every opportunity since it became legal for me to do so. But it does mean I will not continue to work on behalf of hacks whose votes are as reliable as my local weather forecast.

Rather than being a bunch of cry-babies who won’t go along if they don’t get everything they want, the real problem with progressives is that we go along too easily! Republicans play to their base. Democrats flip theirs off to gain credibility with people who will never support them. That this continues to happen under Obama is something we get to be pissed about.

I still think it’s a close race, regardless of the polls. But Susana Martinez is riding on the fact that no one REALLY knows her outside her home town so she can look like she’s a biggie. For years in my former career, I had to work closely with her DA’s office on community projects. She used to be a Democrat until she got into a feud with her former boss and changed parties to run against him, and once elected you’d never know she wasn’t one. My organization was a very liberal one, and we always could count on her support. But she’s also a small town politician, and a bit of a fake who is willing to sell out politically to get elected. And now, true to form, all her positions statements are completely scripted right off the Republican Party of NM Platform because she wouldn’t have a clue about where to stand on issues outside her tiny range of experience as a DA. She’s never done ANYTHING to prepare her for the balancing act required to effectively run an entire state, and lacks the skill or breadth of knowledge to be Governor. Denish has been highly underrated because she served in the shadow of Big Bill, but I think she’s a smarter, savvier leader than most people give her credit for.

What is this strange country where people trust politicans? Lesser evilism is the way politics works, anywhere. The preferential system of voting is codified lesser evilism – it selects the candidate that the most people dislike the least.

That discounts the fact that in some other countries, there’s proportional representation, so you can have more than two workable parties, unlike places like the US which have both first-past-the-post and no proportional representation.

@ColleenSTL: No, the real problem with progressives is that we are a bunch of lazy asses put to shame by the teabaggers, who are about as lazy ass as you can get. The complete lack of organization on the progressive left the past two has been nothing short of astounding. Then when things didn’t go exactly the way we wanted we started pouting and saying “the real problem with progressives is that we go along too easily.” No, the real reason the right regularly cleans our clock is because they own the fucking corporations and media and we have to work 10 times as hard just to be in the ballgame.

For some reason, the US Democrats, and by extension the US left as a whole, are the only leftist movement in the world that treat “solidarity” as a dirty word.

Democrats aren’t a “leftist movement”. What’s true of a Senate caucus that includes Barbara Boxer and Sherrod Brown as well as Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor is true of the national party as a whole. As (I forget who) said, in any rational world any bill that these four people all voted in favor of would be seen as “bipartisan”. Until either Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins (and now Mike Castle and to a lesser extent Scott Brown) retire, or the filibuster is left in the ash heap of history, this is the party we’re stuck with. That’s why I think working the media is (one of) our most effective near-term option

Because the Democratic Party is all that stands between us and the Republican Party. And if you think there’s no difference, you are way dumber than I think you are, and I already think you’re pretty dumb.

Conservative or liberal, I don’t really care. I’ve enjoyed the writing and the points of view you have expressed and the discussions you have stimulated at this site. I started becoming a regular here two years ago, and have enjoyed this site’s growth, and you are an important part of that. Thanks for spending time here and improving this blog.

Also, in your book list, I didn’t see Roger Zelazny’s Amber series. As much as the LOTR and Prydain, the Chronicles of Amber had an effect on me, prompting me to explore the nature of the universe and reality. Really a fantastic series.

It would be a series of commercials where a comedian will joke (except he’ll be serious) about the complete absurdity of voting for the same party that tanked the economy, encourages hate and shamelessly pisses on the poor and the middle class.

Rather than being a bunch of cry-babies who won’t go along if they don’t get everything they want, the real problem with progressives is that we go along too easily!

Look at many other countries with universal health care, paid maternity leave and other benefits, and you will see a progressive base that is more loyal and dependable (and in general, more engaged) than the US progressive base. Part of the reason the US scores 18th in the Economist’s Democracy index is the lack of participation of Americans in politics.

No, the real problem with progressives is that we are a bunch of lazy asses put to shame by the teabaggers, who are about as lazy ass as you can get. The complete lack of organization on the progressive left the past two has been nothing short of astounding. Then when things didn’t go exactly the way we wanted we started pouting and saying “the real problem with progressives is that we go along too easily.” No, the real reason the right regularly cleans our clock is because they own the fucking corporations and media and we have to work 10 times as hard just to be in the ballgame.

totally agree with you, but when I’ve brought this up at other blogs the blame immediately shifts to Obama.

But rather than renouncing Bush/Cheney’s breathtaking expansion of Executive power, Obama has extended it. We are now supposed to accept that the President has the power to order the execution of any US citizen he deems a “terrorist.” And oh-by-the-way there is no review of this designation.

you know this is something I can’t get too excited about, because the expansion of Executive power has been an issue for the entire history of our nation and always continue to be.

I never criticized Bush for what he did here because the truth was, the people were ok with it, and their minds were not going to be changed (Lord knows I’ve tried), so if this is how we’re going to live, I’d rather have a Democrat in office doing this than a Republican.

America would hand power over to Francisco Franco if they could..lets be thankful they can’t.

@Nick: “America would hand power over to Francisco Franco if they could..lets be thankful they can’t.” Are you sure we can’t. Under the right circumstances, I could easily see a Franco type being elected, and it’s not like the current supreme court would step in and stop it before it was too late.

I’m defining them as a leftist movement relatively speaking, in that the Democratic party as a whole wish to move the US government further left than the other party does. They are the mechanism by which the leftist movement in the US as a whole attempt to have their desired policies implemented. To my mind, that makes them part of the leftist movement even though a large proportion of their members sure as hell aren’t leftist.

Just to continue preaching to the already converted: These people are fucking psychotic.

A full 14 percent of Republicans said that it was “definitely true” that Obama sympathized with the fundamentalists and wanted to impose Islamic law across the globe. An additional 38 percent said that it was probably true — bringing the total percentage of believers to 52 percent.

I just hit mute for a commercial that has Uncle Sam digging a pit that has to be about twelve feet deep, while an announcer ominously intones that we have to borrow more money from China to pay for a health care bill that raises taxes, increases insurance premiums and cuts Medicare. It’s all horseshit, but it takes a while to explain that, and if you’re explaining, you’re losing.

The problem with the Democratic strategy’s pretty darn simple. The Democrats are saying that we’re going to have to spend a few years of hard work fixing an unimaginably complex system whose breakdown was caused partially by the spending habits of you and your’s. And part of the cost and work towards the repairs is, well, your fair share of the burden.

The Republicans are saying that if you hire them, they’ll make sure you* (*if you’re white, male, Christian and rich) will prosper despite the recession.

You’d have to not be desperate to treat snake-oil salesmen with the skeptical contempt they deserve. But “not desperate” isn’t a phrase I’d use to describe our nation right now. To exacerbate it all, the media’s in the business of heightening desperation – it is, after all, what draws eyeballs…

So can we still give you shit? Not that any offense would be meant by it of course, just it seems unfair for JC to get all of our whiny moments (especially with paypal stress getting to him). [Mostly kidding of course]

I was never an Obama-bot, and wasn’t surprised to see him turn out to be the most centrist of the three choices originally available. What I DID believe was that he would reclaim our national character, and stand true to certain essential values. And in that I’m afraid our President has been a dismal failure. If anything, he stands as proof of the inherent corruption of absolute power.

I wish people would realize that the President only has so much power. He tried to close Gitmo but the Democratic led Congress wouldn’t let him. They refused funding of it.

If you are you going to call Obama a dismal failure, then you should also call the Democratic Congress a dismal failure. By the way, Clinton, Edwards or Kucinich would have all run in to the same damn problem, ie the idiotic senate, as Obama did.

No, Obama is obviously not a dismal failure. Unlike Clinton, he did get HCR passed. He got Wall Street Reform passed. He is in the process of ending the Iraq war as promised. I for one am very proud of my vote for Obama.

@cleek: I doubt it too, but for a website that proclaims it exists to elect more and better Democrats, announcing that you aren’t voting goes way beyond working against the cause – it suggests that participation in government is pointless. That lands you in the antipatriotic camp in my book, and being a WATB doesn’t fly as an excuse in my book.

Congrats. You just made a move that John Cole made five years ago, and did it while saying more about it in one post than John has said about it in all the five years put together.

But make the move you did, and good for you. Now your misery really begins, because no group of people on earth will tear you a new asshole faster, deeper, more often, or for less provocation, than your new Democrat allies. Kiss self esteem goodbye. Hello, heartburn.

@Frank: Ditto. Most of my disappointment goes to congress. On the other hand, in the last few election cycles while they tried to regain a majority, it was pretty obvious they were adding a lot of blue dogs to get it.

@E.D. Kain: Count me as an original SDP type, I know Shirley Williams. The Liberals are at their very core a Social Democratic party. They are Left by any US political measure and only split from Labour because of an excess of communist activism amongst the unions.

They are a little more centrist now, but they have serious respect for the welfare state. Their coalition deal with the Tories might seem off putting to a leftist like me but it actually shows how moderated the British Tories have become. And frankly, all three British parties garner far more respect from me than the D’s or R’s.

Anyone who votes Republican in this day and age is certifiably insane. It’s no longer about liberal vs. conservative, it’s about the sane vs. the insane. And the lunatics are poised to take over the asylum…again. But I don’t care because I never got my pony.

God am I depressed. Correct me if I’m wrong, but if the Republicans do anywhere near as well as expected, they will take their victory as a vindication of their strategy since the last election, i.e, absolute devotion to the interests of the ruling class at the expense of those of the great mass of the citizens, ceaseless lying and slander, complete indifference to reason, truth and honor, xenophobia, nihilistic obstructionism… I could go on, and on.

if the Republicans do anywhere near as well as expected, they will take their victory as a vindication of their strategy since the last election, i.e, absolute devotion to the interests of the ruling class at the expense of those of the great mass of the citizens, ceaseless lying and slander, complete indifference to reason, truth and honor, xenophobia, nihilistic obstructionism… I could go on, and on.

The problem is that *no matter what happens* the Republicans take it as a vindication of their position. They’re pathological that way.

But I’m sure Chris Dowd will come along soon to tell you how much of a bunch of anonymous wankers you all are.

@J: The silver lining is that, if it’s going to happen, it’s better that it happen in 2010 than in 2012. It means that We, the People have two years to come to our senses. If not—well, let’s hope the Europeans and Chinese are wargaming how to neturalize our nukes without blowing up the world.

@Frank: Ah, Frank. You don’t understand. Trying to close it and failing to do so is just a sign that he never wanted to close it apparently. And now the Dems are supposed to run on protecting the rights of Anwar al-Awlaki as a most pressing issue. We still don’t have a consensus in Congress as to what to do about Guantanamo and whatever processes that have tried to be set up have resulted in fractures within the Democratic party. And we still don’t know exactly how to deal with citizens like Anwar al-Awlaki. But, no. It’s Obama’s fault and these problems will apparently be solved by returning the Republicans to power.

@arguingwithsignposts: When they lose elections, it’s because of ACORN and Mexicans, so their agenda is the bestest and the ones the Americans want. When bad things are made to happen under their governments, then it turns out to be the fault of their Democratic predecessors and successors, and they’ll shout that enough until the conservative-loving billion dollar news media start repeating it as a ‘critics say’ type of troof.

@Just Some Fuckhead: He’ll probably coast home running on “I’m not crazy”—the same way Clinton did in ’96, because if the goopers do take the House, they’ll overreach by miles. It’s also much easier to yell “obstructionist,” when your opponent is clearly obstructing as opposed to when you have healthy majorities in both the House and Senate, and it looks like you simply don’t have power to control your own party.

I wish people would realize that the President only has so much power. He tried to close Gitmo but the Democratic led Congress wouldn’t let him. They refused funding of it.

Do you really think that closing Gitmo was really a high priority for Obama or that he was willing to spend much political capital to achieve it? What percentage/how many prisoners have we released in the last 18 months? Maybe I am just not hearing about it, but from what I can tell Obama has made no significant effort to figure out which detainees were rightfully detained and which should be released/repatriated.

Personally, I am much more concerned about the lengthy detention of people based on the flimsiest of evidence and without and real ability to challenge it than with the physical location where these people are detained.

Well isn’t that just rich. After John called me a psychotic middle-aged caucasian loser I burned all my Chomsky books and Gil Scott-Heron LPs and converted to Pentacostal Tea-Partyism. I guess it’s a wash.

@Just Some Fuckhead: So far, the goopers haven’t had to own their obstructionism. That will change the dynamic considerably. All that stuff about if you are explaining, you are losing. The second the goopers enter into open obstructionism, they’ll have to start explaining, and I don’t think even Fox will be able to change that—though I’m sure they are working on a way of overcoming that limitation even as we speak.

I remember a long time ago you wrote, over at LOOG, that your wife chided you that you might just as well come out of that conservative closet. Just admit it, she said, you are liberal. (That’s my memory.)

Fucking A! Way to go! Now I’ll probably have a lot fewer occasions to accuse you of conjuring false equivalencies.

Duh and double duh…? The economy is going in the wrong direction while MIchelle & daughter spend $50 million on a jaunt to Spain and BHO golfs and takes his ninth vacation doing what he does best—nothing but talk out of both sides of his mouth. And Joe Biden, Mr Credibility himself, is sent out to tell us that the economy is going in the “right direction.”

Welcome Back Carter? — Commandante Zero never visited the Gulf oil spill until after it became an issue—politically tone deaf and prone to reclusiveness when confronted with reality [rose garden syndrome]. His interview with Bri-boy Williams yesterday was a whining and defensive performance. And he tended to seize up on air when Bri-boy offered questions that weren’t gigantic softballs.

If being pro-family is conservative then I guess I’m conservative in that way – but I think ‘family’ should include committed gay couples.

I’d say this example is a particularly appropriate one, since it reflects the kind of limits that modern “conservatism” demands of its disciples. Of course, most people are for creating an environment where families of all kinds are able to blossom. The difference is in thinking that gays, lesbians, and transgendered individuals should also be acknowledged as belonging to this group. But if you belong to the Republican Party–or subscribe to the principles and ideology that serve as its political framework-and you try to maintain both of these positions, then you are automatically at odds with their ultimate endgame.

In their ideal world, such people are perpetualsecond third class citizens. For many, they wouldn’t be satisfied until anyone who possessed The Gay was dead and gone. And I think it’s easy for people to lose sight of those stakes. That’s where the battle lines are being drawn.

At the end of the day, are you going to go to battle for the people who, for all their many faults and squabbles, still fight for equality and justice…or are you going to abet and enable the forces of intolerance and ignorance?

Man am I sick of being told that I need to buck up and support the Democrats because the Republicans are worse. Yeah, I know they’re worse. It’s obvious they’re worse. But “they’re worse” just has it’s limits as a motivational technique, when you can’t say in the next breath “… and we’re going to do something good.” And right now, the Democrats can’t say that.

Okay, so the Republicans in Congress voted against economic stimulus and health care reform. But the Democrats in Congress delivered a half-assed stimulus that won’t lead to job recovery before 2014 and a half-assed health care bill that won’t contain costs or really do anything to make health care delivery better.

I worked, unpaid, for the Obama campaign, full-time, for more than a month. I care about these issues, and I know that the Republicans are “worse” in the sense that they want the wrong things. But the Democrats who tell me they want the right things, can’t deliver those things. They won’t try to deliver those things, not if it means (gasp) campaigning in Maine or ending the filibuster (Trotskyite steps tho’ those would be). They won’t put single-payer on the table, they won’t insist on the public option even when they have an opening, they won’t go back to the well for another stimulus package… maybe it’s true that the Republicans don’t want to, but the Democrats can’t. Anyway, like I say, I’m getting tired of being told I’m supposed to care about the difference between the two. Yeah, the Republicans are worse. But the Democrats are still pretty bad.

@eric: Yes. It is really just corporation vs. worker, the rest is white noise. The repubs have large corporate money to run the well oiled propaganda machine. Who benefits? Follow the money.

The only solution, which will never happen, is to get the money out of politics.

In the last couple of weeks, we have had verbal attacks on public workers, Palin saying unions are great except for the dems, and that feminism is a conservative idea. Then we had the wonderful Beckathon this weekend, bogarting off MLK. Beck previously attacked churches who preach a message of social or economic justice.

These are in essence attacks against traditional dem voting blocks. I expect we will see more of this through 2012. I think it’s the new meme.

@morzer: Like I said, I’m no expert. I’ll have to do more research to give you an honest answer. I like the direction the Tories have taken, and I like Clegg on civil liberties and war, etc. I think the coalition is in many ways quite progressive. But I’m no expert, so…

@daveinboca: Yeah, and here’s the funny part. If you guys do win back the House, you’re gonna have to, y’know, DO stuff and stuff. You don’t get to spend two years investigating the arugula sources for the White House to see if Obama is lying about them being organic. And if that’s all you do while the economy decays, you’re dead. And you know it. But you want your last hurrah before fading into demographic obscurity. Enjoy it because it ain’t gonna last.

@MattR: Good Lord. I remember the entire months of November and into January being spent on trying to find a trial location for Kahlid Sheikh Mohammed. Maybe the administration should have dragged that out longer. Should have let that overwhelm anything else he was trying to do. Cause it was so popular. Oh and the Greenwaldists were defending those moves all the way and drumming up support for it…helping to make it a popular move with people outside the civil libertarian community, like they always do.

@d.eris: I’m not talking about being sympathetic to the Democrats, per se. I think talking about political philosophy within the crude rubric of GOP vs Dem is way too limiting. Right vs left is limiting, but two parties?

I think that, over time, you will find that localism is no more compatible with the Democratic party than with the Republicans, neither of which would recognize subsidiarity if it bit them in the ass.

The best one can do is help build structures and communities that will enable people to wean themselves away from the imperial state, so that when the inevitable crash happens, we have each other to fall back on.

I would disagree. If anything, I think the past 19 months have demonstrated to everyone that there is no Peak Wingnut and that things can, in fact, get unceasingly worse.

I would add to that, it’s not just that the GOP “wants bad things”. They don’t want anything beyond the perpetuation of their own political power. They see themselves as Republicans first, with everything thereafter competing for second. They are a Nihilist party that doesn’t even feign concern for good governance.

@Suffern ACE: But that is kinda my point. I don’t particularly care about KSM. He and a handful of other “legitimate” detainees are red herrings. If Obama was actually concerned about indefinite detention and Gitmo he would be focusing on the 90% of cases that are no brainers to anyone looking at them objectively.

I would add to that, it’s not just that the GOP “wants bad things”. They don’t want anything beyond the perpetuation of their own political power. They see themselves as Republicans first, with everything thereafter competing for second. They are a Nihilist party that doesn’t even feign concern for good governance.

I like what you added to that. They really only care about power for power’s sake. They are, essentially, the Party of Gollum. Indeed, I am fascinated to see what people write the Republican Party of today 30-40 years from now.

If you guys do win back the House, you’re gonna have to, y’know, DO stuff and stuff. You don’t get to spend two years investigating the arugula sources for the White House to see if Obama is lying about them being organic.

Oh, sure they can. The economy will turn around eventually. If they just wait it out they can claim all their investigations were what made it improve. They can very easily do absolutely nothing.

There really is no “can” there. They have said over and over all they will do is investigate and obstruct. They have declared themselves do-nothings and their supporters are right behind them in all that. And any economist worth their salt says that we need jobs programs NOW. Waiting until the eventual improvement (or banana republic status) will hurt way too many folks for me to get complacent.

King, the Long Island congressman, said that in terms of social issues, the raging controversy over the Arizona border laws is providing more than enough ammunition for Republicans in key districts.
__
“The Arizona immigration law is there, there’s no reason to be raising an issue of gay rights” as a wedge, he said.

The other point of the showing up anyway strategy: The Democrats who survive, and most of the up-and-comers, will not see a defeat as a lesson that they should have fought harder and moved left, they, reinforced by the usual media suspects, will take the lesson that they should compromise more. The Firebaggers are working for Dianne Feinstein and David Broder.
When I send money to a candidate, I tell them I expect them to stand up to Republicans, and not to go Blue Doggy.

I have to say, even with Bush I never much gave a damn about whether he was in DC, Maine or the fake ranch.

OT: I’ve been getting fund-raising requests on Harry Reid’s behalf from people like Al Franken and Sherrod Brown, ever since he stepped on his tongue with the mosque thing. Anybody else getting them from progs?

@burnspbesq: Ahem good sir, he’s cheerleading for the landslide. Not even worthy of your considerable clowning talents honestly. Since I’d love to see how the Republicans survive sitting around investigating when employment benefits run out again and state budgets decay even more.

“Because the Democratic Party is all that stands between us and the Republican Party. And if you think there’s no difference, you are way dumber than I think you are, and I already think you’re pretty dumb.”

Yes, good come back, I can see you put serious thought into it. No wonder you vote Democrat. As I said above, lesser evilism is the primary form of political reactionism in the United States today. Ironically, the Democrats don’t even stand up to Republicans. They don’t stand between you and anything. You’ll end up facing a Republican majority once again.

Since I’d love to see how the Republicans survive sitting around investigating when employment benefits run out again and state budgets decay even more.

I suspect the GOP will do quite well with a “scorched Earth” strategy. Remember that the right wing media is a hell of a lot stronger than it was in the 90s, and the mainstream media (what’s left of it) is much weaker and more easily intimidated. The GOP will cripple Obama with multiple investigations and blame him for lack of action on the economy. It will be a set up for the 2012 election. And if the present trends continue, that election will bring a radicalized and vengeful GOP back to total power, with catastrophic consequences for the country.

@morzer: I don’t have the intestinal fortitude right now, plus I had a good dinner and I’d prefer if it stayed in my digestive tract. Tomorrow is another story, although I get the strangest feeling we’ll never hear from this one again.

Well, he turned up yesterday. I wouldn’t bother with his blog. No-one else has, and I only went there as a piece of field anthropology.. or anthrolology. I suspect he’ll get tired of being whacked around the head with logic and evidence soon enough.

A tell? I never said I was a Democrat. In the Manichean political universe of Democrats and Republicans, not being a Democrat immediately implies that one is a Republican. In fact, I am opposed to both the Republican and Democratic parties. One of my less intelligent interlocutors here stated earlier that the Democrats are the only thing standing between him and the Republicans. Well, there’s no one standing between us and Democratic-Republican joint misrule. E.D. Kain mentioned above the necessity of taking sides. I am on the side of the opposition to the two-party state and against the insanity that is voting for Democrats and Republicans over and over again and expecting something other than the continuing reproduction and expansion of the global warfare and corporate welfare state.

Sure, I’ll vote for the Democrats in November. I’m not stupid. And as much as I despise the Republicans, I’m also completely fed up with milquetoast Democrats who can’t seem to muster either a collective spine or a sense of passion about what they supposedly believe. There seem to be only a handful of Democrats anywhere who don’t act like craven wusses, people like Alan Grayson, Al Franken and Russ Feingold (what, do only Jewish Democrats have balls anymore, or what?). Win or lose, at least those guys don’t start out the debate by eating shit for a bipartisan pat on the head from their “good friends” across the aisle. Obama and the rest of the Democrats have already lost it for themselves, riding their mealy-mouthed bipartisan choo-choo train straight to oblivion. What pisses me off the most is that they seem to care more about getting approval from the people who will always despise them no matter what, while doing everything in their power to never, ever, follow the advice of the people who got them elected and who have been right about pretty much everything for the past eight or ten years. And then they go on with the whining “nobody could have predicted” routine, or “Joe Lieberman made us do it.” It’s embarrassing and pathetic. That is all. Over and out.

A lot of Americans use the word “conservative” to mean temperate, sensible, skeptical of changes. I’m guessing that’s what E.D. Kain was thinking when he labelled himself as one.

American conservatism for the last few decades has been a toxic combination of radicalism and irresponsibility. It’s gotten explosive the last few years though.

I guarantee that in the 2012 Republican primary, Sarah Palin is going to be pushed by the media as a the “moderate,” simply because her Republican competition is going to be crazier than Sharron Angle. I may end up having to switch my registration and pull the lever for Palin.

Welcome! I converted in 2005, about the same time as John Cole and many others. However, the macro realignment has been an ongoing process extending across decades. We’re just individual casualties of a long-term process with the result that “Democrats are much more liberal than Republicans on the economic dimension: Democrats in the most conservative states are still much more liberal than Republicans in even the most liberal states.”

I am on the side of the opposition to the two-party state and against the insanity that is voting for Democrats and Republicans over and over again and expecting something other than the continuing reproduction and expansion of the global warfare and corporate welfare state.

In other words, you’re jerking off on a street corner and asking passersby to watch.

I am on the side of the opposition to the two-party state and against the insanity that is voting for Democrats and Republicans over and over again and expecting something other than the continuing reproduction and expansion of the global warfare and corporate welfare state.

Republican will not have to explain why they’re being obstructionist. They didn’t have to explain it from 2000-2008. They won’t have to explain why they will finish the job of siphoning off the remaining wealth of the middle class and giving it to the rich. They didn’t explain it when they were in power. They won’t explain finding another country to declare war on, because they didn’t explain it in the first half of this decade. Instead, they will lie, cheat, steal and crow, “We can do this because we won and you lost!” Just like they did last time they won. And the people who support them will happily give up their unions, their civil liberties, their job benefits, their affordable education and their affordable health care, JUST LIKE THEY DID LAST TIME.

It’s like cows lining up and begging to be hired at McDonald’s, not really understanding or, incredibly, caring that the only open position is for cheeseburgers. All they see is the yellow and the red.

The problem is that the Constitution forces deeply undemocratic institutions like the Senate, which tilts so much power to the uneducated and reactionary that moderates and liberals get fed up with the lack of progress, and disengage. And if we try to change the Constitution, with such entrenched power in the hands of the reactionaries, god only knows what we will end up with. So we don’t dare fix the constitution, and politics and government gets worse, and worse, and worse.

This is not how realignments happen. This is how countries go from Global Hegemon to backwaters over the course of a couple generations. Pick your own example – Germany, Spain, France – a round of fascism is par for the course. How the British got through it with nothing worse than Thatcher may be luck or it may be instructive in some way.

Democratic enthusiasm is actually pretty high for a midterm election. Midterms usually have turnout levels of around 30%.

The problem is the psychotic Republican base which looks set to turn out in absolutely record numbers, and uninformed independents who just want to “throw the bums out” without thinking about who is going to replace them.

If Sharron Angle beats Harry Reid in Nevada, the first thing firebaggers are going to say is “SEE!!! Voters are angry that they didn’t get the public option!”

Even the drunk driving C student and his torturer sidekick never tried that shit when they were defaming the Oval Office.

There’s something to be said for the attitude that you know where you stand with Republicans. They’re going to fuck you over but you know that. With Democrats, they sweet talk you and promise you all kinds of stuff and then they put the ball gag in your mouth and tie your hands and pull down your pants and bend you over the table anyway.

@mclaren: Hate to burst your bubble, but you would consider the treatment of Padilla as a less serious violation of the law? Padilla was a citizen on our soil, in custody, in no position to cause harm to anyone. If we had the right to target, or assassinate, if you prefer, terrorist leaders in Yemen, I don’t see the distinction, legal or moral, between citizens and non citizens in this context. I doubt W. would have hesitated to do the same thing, or worse, but he would never have been honest about it. With Obama we know about it, and are therefore morally implicated in it, and it should make us uncomfortable.

This is the sort of moral morass you get into when prosecuting a war on terrorism. Obama had to promise to try to win this war or he would never have been elected. He is doing this because our flawed political system demands it. Player, game, hate – do the math.

@mclaren: Hate to burst your bubble, but you would consider the treatment of Padilla as a less serious violation of the law? Padilla was a citizen on our soil, in custody, in no position to cause harm to anyone. If we had the right to target, or assassinate, if you prefer, terrorist leaders in Yemen, I don’t see the distinction, legal or moral, between citizens and non citizens in this context. I doubt W. would have hesitated to do the same thing, or worse, but he would never have been honest about it. With Obama we know about it, and are therefore morally implicated in it, and it should make us uncomfortable.

This is the sort of moral morass you get into when prosecuting a war on terrorism. Obama had to promise to try to win this war or he would never have been elected. He is doing this because our flawed political system demands it. Player, game, hate – do the math.

Oh, sure they can. The economy will turn around eventually. If they just wait it out they can claim all their investigations were what made it improve. They can very easily do absolutely nothing.

They can do nothing for a year or two. You are making the mistake here of thinking this is just another recession. But it isn’t. Take a look at the graph of median number of weeks unemployed. In this recession it goes exponential. In all previous recessions going back to 1945 that number never got above 13, now it’s above 26 weeks and still climbing.

Take a look at the graph of manufacturing bounceback in the 18 months after the start each recession since 1948. In the 40s and 50s manufacturing grows in double digits after the recession, in the 60s and 70s it grows in the 6% to 8% range. But in this recession manufacturing in America declines 18 months after the start of the 2007 recession.

Once again, this recession is radically different from previous recessions. Employers are taking the opportunity this time to offshore the lost jobs. They’re not coming back. The notion that “this is just another economic downturn and employment will pick up soon” overlooks that we (and by this I mean the entire world) have entered into a new economic era. The post WW II economic framework is borken and it’s not coming back. The internet + computers + robots + globalization have shattered essentially all the component parts of the post-WW II Bretton Woods global economic framework and we now find ourselves in a new era.

Among the things that have changed:

[1] Skilled manual labor has been automated out of existence by robots since the 70s, but we are now seeing skilled knowledge work getting automated out of existence by computers + large databases + sophisticated programs (like data mining software, neural nets, that kind of thing). Genetic algorithms can now design antennas and cars and flash card access algorithms that are more efficient than human designs. The antennas and cars and algorithms look really weird and they’re like nothing a human would have thought of. But they work better than human designs.

[2] Global wage arbitrage is now crushing wages in the developed countries. It’s not just kids assembling printed cricuits who compete with adult workers in America anymore, it’s Chinese PhDs who will program that GUI for $5 an hour and be glad of the work, and they’re the ones who now compete with a PhD in computer science who lives in America and expects to get paid $80K per year plus part ownership of the company.

[3] The titantic overhang of debt has made all banks in the developed countries insolvent, for all intents and purposes. Banks still exist in America and Europe but they’re zombies. They’re extending and pretending. If all their bad loans were called in and all the house-of-cards junk mortgages and toxic CDOs the banks in America and Europe invested in for the last 20 years were written off as the bad loans they actually are, there would be no more banks in America and Europe. There would be scorched earth. We’d be at Year Zero. The financial system in Europe and America would literally disintegrate. Right now it shambles along by a process of make-believe, like Japan after 1990. It took Japan 20 years to dig its way out of its economic collapse. What makes anyone think it won’t take 20 years for America to dig its way out of this Himalaya-sized mountain of bad debt?

[4] Japan and Europe aren’t spending a trillion dollars a year to lose two wars at once on the other side of the earth, and Japan and Europe don’t have college systems where the average citizen has to pay $40,000 to $200,000 to get a four-year degree. Japan and Europe also don’t have a medical-industrial complex that’s gobbling up 16% of GDP with greed and waste and fraud and collusion and corrupt cartels. America still has half a dozen bubbles that continue to grow, and each one is at least as big as the home mortgage bubble that nuked the U.S. economy in 2007.

Those bubbles will burst. Only a matter of time. The military-industrial bubble, the college tuition bubble, the medical-industrial bubble, the homeland security bubble, the commercial real estate bubble. Each of these bubbles continues to suck up fantastic amounts of money from the U.S. economy, growing at a rate of 8% to 12% per year (that means doubling every 6 to 9 years; in 12 to 18 years, these bubbles quadruple in size…in 18 to 27 years, they increase in size by a factor of 8… You get the picture).

And America’s military-industrial and college tuition and medical-industrial and homeland security bubbles are growing by double-digits while the rest of the economy is collapsing. The rest of the American economy is on the tipping point of deflation.

The U.S. economy is headed for another leg down, and when these bubbles burst, you are going to see a waterfall-like decline.

So this fantasy that “the recession will soon be over and then things will be back to normal in America” just isn’t the reality. Krugman and other respected economists are projecting a double dip recession and a Japan-style “lost decade.” That means we grind along with 9% to 12% unemployment for a decade, maybe more.

Let me put it this way: to stop losing more jobs, the U.S. economy must grow at a minimum of 2.4% per year. What rate did we grow at last month?

1.6%. This means the U.S. economy is still losing jobs. And that growth late is flattening out. The stimulus has petered out and congress doesn’t seem able (or willing) to pass anther round of stimulus. So what do the numbers say will happen to unemployment?

It’s got to increase. If we’re below the 2.4% annual GDP growth rate necessary for new jobs created to equal old jobs lost because of the natural churn rate of the U.S. economy, than simple common sense tells us the unemployment rate has got to go up.

There are many reasons why the Democrats are unpopular. Mainly, America has gone off the cliff, and the Democrats are fiddling.

Obama wants to be popular like Reagan and Clinton, so he has a mix of their policies, but America is in a mess because of Reagan and Clinton (plus Bush II) and while America could cope with Reagan and Clinton’s policies to some extent in the 80s and 90s, America is broken now, and those policies are now very dangerous.

Neoliberalism, war, and high defence budgets are crazy, but especially so in this environment. Add Bush II’s “security” policies of torture, domestic spying, detention without trial, execution of American citizens abroad, etc., and Obama is a complete disaster. He had the greatest opportunity imaginable when he entered office, but he was stuck in his old dream of being a popular president like Reagan and Clinton, and so he missed the boat. His personality type is the Status Seeker (enneagram type 3), so he figured if he does what all the popular people do, then he can’t go wrong. Oops.

BTW, did anyone see Robert Gibbs on Fox and Friends this morning? No…probably not. Don’t say they aren’t fighting their opposition, because Gibbs got into the mud with Gretchen Carlson this morning. He’s getting criticized for it pretty badly.

Do you really think that closing Gitmo was really a high priority for Obama or that he was willing to spend much political capital to achieve it? What percentage/how many prisoners have we released in the last 18 months? Maybe I am just not hearing about it, but from what I can tell Obama has made no significant effort to figure out which detainees were rightfully detained and which should be released/repatriated.

Oh he tried all right. Heck, it was one first things he announced that he would do when he became President 18 months ago. He just didn’t realize that people in his own party would stab him in his back. Don’t you remember that he even fired his own counsel over this?

I will never understand why people are giving Congress a totally free pass on this, but are blaming Obama 100%. Makes no sense since Congress has funding authority for the closure.

I will never understand why people are giving Congress a totally free pass on this, but are blaming Obama 100%. Makes no sense since Congress has funding authority for the closure.

Because some believe that Obama has unlimited influence over Congress, because Bush did, which he didn’t, but I digress.

In the end Obama’s problem is even if he tries and fails (like he did with Gitmo, cramdown and Dawn Johnsen), he gets accused of not trying at all, which is why I call bullshit to anyone who said they wanted Obama to reach for the moon even if it falls short…because if he did (and when he does), he gets accused of giving up or not trying hard enough or not being genuine.

9/11 made me realize I’m more of a nationalist than of any party. I hope the GOP loses in 2010. If they don’t, I’ve already had some lefties tell me independents will be to blame. Even if the Democrats don’t turn out to vote.

[…] I’ve seen this coming for a long time: the formerly prolific, hetrodox conservative blogger E.D. Kain has abandoned the conservatives, passing the liberaltarian lable and going full on liberal. […]

Can’t decipher your post. I take Plavix. It prevents blood clots. They tell me I have to take it or die. So I just take it like a good patient.

I’m pretty sure that Plavix is what will kill me. Oh well. Maybe the death panel will just end my misery. Plavix is a Republican drug. Not only is it dangerous, but it puts you on a blacklist for future health insurance even if you stop taking it. Now that is one clever pharmaceutical little tactic, I think. Only very smart people like Republicans could arrange something like that.

What are you taking? How’s the brain tumor? Still in remission?
Well, nice talking to you, and go fuck yourself.

I appreciate this post, particularly that you haven’t allowed the flaming comments here to push you back into the uncomfortable (for you) conservative mode in backlash. I feel your frustration that polls seem to show that people think going back to the ways of doing things in the 2000s is an actual solution to the problems facing us. I know that Andrew Sullivan respects his cyborg collective but I cannot take them seriously as thinkers, much less conservative thinkers, when Conor writes “I don’t think Obama deserves a second term.” Fine, disagree with the man, but if they want to pretend to be a serious thinker can they honestly name one Republican who could get presidential nomination who “deserves” the job? Maybe it is a failure of imagination on my part, but until the “conservatives” find a conservative solutions to the actual issues of the day, they don’t “deserve” any form of public office.

The conservatives aren’t the problem, by the way. Well, they are, obviously, in the sense that they want to pillage all of us for the sake of the rich and engage in bloody imperialist adventures. But we’ve known that for at least 40 years and probably 60. The problem is finding “leaders” who actually recognize them for what they are (dangerous) and to fight them rather than coddle them or propitiate them. Still waiting for that to happen.

You are conflating 2000-2006 with 2006-2008. There was a difference between One Party Rule then, Divided Government, and One Party Rule now. The best was in the middle. There is an alternative voting heuristic to partisan Republican and partisan Democrat.

Impressive poll, but I am still dubious about the GOP taking the House. There is just no overestimating how difficult it is to flip the House. House incumbents(frequently aided by gerrymandered districts) enjoy extraordinarily high re-election rates. Even when voters tell pollsters they despise Congress in a general poll, they’ll still vote for their specific representative who is often the conduit by which federal services are delivered or expedited to individuals, municipalities, and businesses in the district. House elections are almost always “local” (in the Tip O’Neill sense). In the almost 100 years since we have been been electing Senators directly (only since the 17th Amendment was ratified in 1913) the House of Representatives has never flipped majorities unless the Senate flipped first or at the same time. If conventional wisdom is correct and the Republicans take the House but not the Senate, it would be an historic first… Soooo either the GOP takes both, or they take the Senate and fall just short on the House. You’ll still have a Democratic President, and maybe he’ll find his veto pen – as Clinton did in ’94-’00. As Bush did in ’06-’08. Better governance was the result.

I think that, although there will be some dark days before then, things may just work out. If we can convince other self-identified “sane conservatives” like yourself to confront the situation as it really is with eyes open, we stand a much better chance.

I agree with you generally here though I’m not and never will be a conservative. The systems developed by humans in the past worked, but that doesn’t automatically make them better than new systems. Just because something worked in the past doesn’t mean it is the best system for the future–and it doesn’t mean it was the best system in the past either.

I value conservatism because it can slow liberalism down, not because I think it should be slowed down, but because a lot of humans can’t handle change at the pace it happens and I don’t want them to be left behind. Being left behind is what created the Tea Baggers.

[…] have been a number of reactions lately to my decision to no longer consider myself a ‘conservative’. Few have been exactly favorable. Perhaps that is because I have not been clear enough or because I […]

Argue on behalf of a welfare state because you think it is good in its own right, not because it’s somehow necessary for a market economy. We sort-of argued about it before, but since it was brief consider this a continuation. Do you actually think that before Bismarck in the 1880s there were no market economies? If so, how would the countries we today consider “first-world” be classified?

I’m not going to vote, but if you want the Devil’s Advocate argument for why a GOP takeover would be good, just remember how things were the last time a Democratic president faced a congress controlled by the other party.

What I don’t get is: Where is the model for this beautifully functioning minimal-government, anti-regulatory, flat-tax utopia conservatives seem to think is within our grasp if only liberals weren’t so pigheaded? Where has this worked in the history of history? What on earth gives them the idea that this is even possible?

To be honest, he sounds like such a liberal to begin with, I surprised he went with the conservative label at all. It’s kind of like calling yourself a vegetarian when you still eat meat. It seems like his biggest problem is with the conservative party as it is now, not with conservative standings themselves, though. Perhaps if things were different in politics, he would not need to change the label at all.

Welcome to the club. Been here a long time. Not liberals or Democrats. Not really Independents or Liberaltarians.

Here, we just value, you know, data and facts. Accuracy matters. So does knowledge. And consistency. The ability to state your case without “talking points” or “framing the message” is key.

Oh, and we’ve got to be able to take responsibility for those times when we are incorrect in our assessment of a situation, topic, or policy. We’re not infallible. No one is. Here, the ability to self-review and admit when we make mistakes – and we make mistakes, I assure you – is key.

Didn’t read the comments. I’m sure you’re being skewered by some for being disloyal, Commie, Socialist, Fascist, or all three. Suggest that you laugh at the all three types. Remember, we base our positions on the data and the facts – even if others do not.

Lastly, E.D., you will doubt yourself at times. Don’t worry about it. Here, we all doubt ourselves. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be worth spit. Or we’d be in the blind loyalists/purge faction. Worse yet, we’d have no sense of humor.

[…] know he’s probably sick of everyone talking about him by now, but E.D. Kain’s recent talk about abandoning the conservative label began to remind me about a similar moment his colleague William had a few […]

Your post was linked by Friedersdorf. Very enlightening post. As someone who began on the left and is finding himself uncertain as to which direction to settle on, this is heartening.

Moreover, I also retain a romanticism-inspired weariness of modernity and specifically technology. Additionally the part about walking until you reach pavement really hit home. I was born in an urbanish area and moved to a suburb with tons of adjoining land and remember many aimless afternoons walking until the sun began to set…thanks for that. Good luck with the new party, just getting us to show up is half the battle.

@beejeez: Depends. For anarcho-capitalists it’s medieval Iceland (and possibly Ireland). Anglo-Saxon law shared many similar features though you were born into a clan rather than voluntarily choosing an organization and they had a king (albeit of the “first among equals” in a warband variety). Modern Somalian anarchy works (or worked, until the U.S targeted it as part of its war on terror) similarly, where law is based on clans one opts into rather than geography. For those libertarians who consider themselves patriots, they generally just think of the U.S. For some it might be the Articles of Confederation or the Jeffersonian era under the Constitution. For Jacob Hornsberg & Bryan Caplan the golden age would be a brief period starting in 1880 and ending with immigration restrictions or Jim Crow (I forget which came first). Restricting things to the post-war era, some like to cite the citystates Singapore and Hong Kong on various aspects. Patri Friedman doesn’t look to existing examples, but thinks that there should be a lot more experimentation, many of which will fail but some of which will succeed spectacularly. Paul Romer is of a similar mind, though I don’t think he is considered a libertarian.

wasn’t surprised to see him turn out to be the most centrist of the three choices originally available.

You must be joking.

While I agree Hillary would have been to the left on reproductive issues, she would have gone to the right of Obama on things like foreign policy and the wars. And Edwards? I admit his career was short and unmemorable but he was to the right of both Clinton and Obama on virtually every issue. He just gave pretty speeches. It irritated me to no end that Obama got painted as the one with the least experience, who only had words and an image to go on when that defined John “I co-sponsored the AUMF against Iraq” Edwards. What a lying sack of shit that man is.

It is not polite to say “I told you so” but I did in many comments on your earlier posts here. I will try to remember your list of conservative views — you approve of maternity leave you don’t like the fact that if you walk a while you will meet a paved road (or a metro-line or supertrain rail) . You believe in civil liberties and checks and balances. You are a deficit hawk and think it is better to raise taxes than run deficits.

All of the views I listed above are called “liberal” in the USA. Libertarians and conservatives might sometimes like to pretend that US liberals don’t believe those things (and are secretly Lenin in dsiguise) but the views are clearly liberal, more likely to be found in the Democratic party than the Republican party etc.

You also like markets and especially competitive markets and like federalism. Those views are common among liberals but aren’t what is called liberalism in the USA. Respect for markets is very widespread among liberals.

I remain puzzled as to why you ever thought you were a conservative or, for that matter, a libertarian.

[…] know he’s probably sick of everyone talking about him by now, but E.D. Kain’s recent talk about abandoning the conservative label began to remind me about a similar moment his colleague William had a few […]

[…] have been a number of reactions lately to my decision to no longer consider myself a ‘conservative’. Few have been exactly favorable. Perhaps that is because I have not been clear enough or because I […]

[…] I’ve seen this coming for a long time: the formerly prolific, hetrodox conservative blogger E.D. Kain has abandoned the conservatives, passing the liberaltarian lable and going full on liberal. […]

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